Changes!

What's new?

• Two years ago, I started work at the Humane Society of the United States. So long agencies! This place has been interesting. 
• Divorce! Freedom! 

C'est tout for now. A bientot!

Say What Again?

Oh, I guess it's been a minute huh? Or two years...

Since the last post to this blog:

• I started a new job at another agency in January 2014.
• Gavin started school at a new daycare. 
• Gabby finished out first grade and started second. 
• I enjoyed my new job for six months. 
• I made some new friends, added one more person to my Very Special List of People I Will Never Willingly Work With Again. 
• I joined the PTA Board as Treasurer. That was ill-advised. 
• Bill continues to do his sooper-sekrit contractor job. 
• In February 2015, we took a very long vacation home to Trinidad, where I played mas for the last time for a long while. 
• In March of that same year, I accepted a position at The Humane Society of the United States. With a commute that is now 45 minutes without traffic, but it gives me a lot of time to just be in a quiet space: 
• No one saying "Mommy!" 
• No one requesting anything of me, personally or professionally. 
• Listening to Audiobooks: The Martian, To Kill A Mockingbird, and Go Set A Watchman 

Gabby is enjoying second grade, and has also joined Brownies. She has also become quite an accomplished swimmer! Gavin still holds a deep and seemingly unending love for tomatoes and all things with wheels. He just got his first Big Boy haircut - he is quite cute but definitely no longer a baby (he will be five soon, so there's also that). Both of them are going to be quite tall as adult and I am afraid for what the teenaged years will bring considering how much they eat now!  They are also natural comedians, both of them in their own way: Gabby has a quick and dry wit (something about apples and trees in there) and Gavin likes fart jokes.

C'est tout pour le maintenant!

How to Fish a Matchbox Car Out of the Toilet Without Using Your Hands

...or, More Adventures in Potty Training.

I love my Facebook family. They can be counted on for a range of advice, from the ridiculous to the sublime on most subjects. Last week we decided to go all out: just put this boy in some underpants and schedule him to go to the bathroom. Things went pretty well most of the day, with a couple of accidents. But a week later, he just refuses to ask to use the bathroom. He will go in his pants and tell me it's "time to change the diaper."

A few friends had a great suggestion: try leaving him without anything at all on - i.e. no pull up, no underpants, nothing. This sounds like it would work. Genetics alone says that my kids should love to run around naked. In fact, one of his sister's daycare teachers complained once that she was getting completely naked to use the bathroom at school. It was pretty funny, especially when I had to remind her that she was the teacher and it was her classroom. Anyway, Gavin was not having any of it. He hates to be naked. He always asks to put clothes on. If it weren't for the pronounced family resemblance, I would wonder if they gave me someone else's kid at the hospital...

Then we tried to get him to pee outside. He freaked out. He refused to pee outside, and ran inside to the bathroom to use it. Civilized? Maybe. But this will not help him on J'Ouvert morning. This is your mom looking out for your future, kid.

So we're trucking along, and hope that eventually this toilet thing will stick. I am not terribly hopeful.


Oh, and about fishing matchbox cars out of the toilet? He had one in his hand when he went... and it fell in. I refused to touch it, but futilely tried to fish it out with the toilet brush. He looked at me and said, "I get it." And reached in with his little hand and swiped it. I ran it under the hot water and cleaned it (and his hand!). And that is how you fish a matchbox car out of a toilet without using your (own) hands.

Adventures in Potty Training

We have settled in okay to school. Gabby is bored - she knows pretty much everything that is on the curriculum for the first half of the year, but is not quite ready to skip a grade. Meetings with her teacher will be forthcoming to address the boredom and come up with a plan. My mother calls it Gordon-itis. I agree - and this is fixable.

But now our attention turns to Gavin. We have six long hours alone during the day. Option A: come home at 7:45, eat breakfast, watch TV, play outside, nap, eat lunch, pick up Gabby...

Option B: Do stuff! So, we have a schedule. We come home at 7:45, go back to bed for a short while (we're not morning people), wake up, have breakfast, then have a little curriculum: reading books; computer exercises in Numbers, Letters, and Colors;  flash cards for the same; coloring and drawing to develop the fine motor skills; nap; lunch; pick Gabby up; free range play after homework.

We also tried potty training.

Gavin is not afraid of the toilet. In fact, he's rather proud of his efforts. High fives all around when he successfully uses it. But it's not consistent, which is where we come in as parents. Today I set his timer so that every 30 - 45 minutes we'd give it a try. Works pretty well...

I also tried to put him in underwear. I showed them to him, he showed interest. I put them on and the SCREAMSSSSS that came out of his mouth! One would swear I'd done a belated circumcision on the child! I took them off and he snatched them out of my hands and dramatically threw them across the room.

"Dat not yours Mommy! Want diaper!" Then he marched over to the changing table, grabbed a diaper and handed it to me with a mutinous glare.

So baby steps it is. At least he will willingly use the toilet...

In Which We Start School

Earlier this summer I made the choice to leave my job and pull the kids out of daycare. It's been... yeah. They are the most entertaining pair of children, and of course they entertain each other. They also know each other's buttons! Gavin is not a morning person - much like his mother. Shocking. Gabby bounds out of bed ready to take on the world. Most days she leaves him alone, but others she will stare at him and try to hug him, which drives him batshit.

Then he retaliates. He chases her around the house, roaring like some kind of demented mini lion. Oh siblings...

Soon enough came time for back to school shopping. Equipped with special lunchbox and shoes from Granny, new outfit and a stocked backpack, we were on our way. P.G. County schools in my district have a very early start: bell at 7:45 AM and dismissal at 1:55 PM. Fortunately we live right around the corner from the school, so a 7:00 AM wake time still means on-time arrival. Gabby had requested a 5:30 AM wake up call, which I denied for the sake of everyone's sanity. Still, at 7:08, I was being pestered to hurry because she didn't want to be late. Reassured that would not be the case, she consented to pose for some photos.

Of course there was a traffic jam. Our sixty second car ride turned into spending more than five minutes parked at the stop sign to exit the subdivision. No matter, we parked and walked in. At the classroom, Gabby discovers her desk with her name on it is right next to one of her old buddies from daycare. We are dismissed with perfunctory hugs and kisses. It's at this point that Gavin realizes that we are leaving his beloved tormentor behind. 

"Gaaaabbbbyyyyyy! Gaaabby... " The wailing was heartbreakingly pathetic. He kept this up the whole walk back to the car, through a conversation with Granny and with Daddy, and for the ride home.

 I had to console him with a slide show of pics of Gabby. That calmed him down. We puttered about for a bit, got lunch, took a nap, and walked over to pick her up. They ran at each other like they had been separated for a year instead of a day... then it was back to business as usual. This morning when we rolled up to school, I was informed that there was no need to walk her all the way to her classroom. She left us at the end of the hallway to go off by herself, kissing and hugging even more abrupt than yesterday. 

Gavin cried for one minute and was over it.

We Ready for the Road!

We have been so blessed to have two children who are such world-class travelers. Gabby has been flying since she was seven months old, and I can think of just one time where she had a meltdown while we were traveling. Gavin started a little older, at eleven months, but he's also taken to flying like a champ. The pressure changes don't seem to bother them too much, and they like the relative excitement of getting on that plane and going to a different country!

Gratuitous cute shot

This year's trip was no exception. We had a flight that put us in Trinidad right around 11 PM. We had to stand in very long lines, but both kids behaved like champs despite the late hour. There was the usual age-appropriate misbehavior, but taken as a whole I know that *I* wanted to curl up in a ball and be left alone. But there was Gabby, chatting with the Immigration officer as though she'd met him before, and Gavin exclaiming "Look Mommy!" at each new thing.

(sideways photos are a new thing)

The family was excited to see them as usual, and Gabby disappeared to Auntie Heather's house to be seen occasionally for meal times and random hugs. For the most part Gavin stuck close. He did, after all, get the last Mommy at the Mommy Store.

More sideways photos. Don't judge.

Gabby played mas! The week before we left, my friend Dina asked me if she wanted to play. I asked: Hey Gabs, do you want to dress up in a costume and be in a parade? Silly me. Of course the answer was a resounding yes! This pandered to her nascent vanity, after all. She was to be a chocolate cupcake, so we bought the materials and Auntie Heather sewed the costume for her:

Carnival Saturday dawned bright and hot. We were supposed to meet the band for 7:30 or something ridiculous. As I had just returned from a fete at 5:30 this was just not happening. We eventually met up with them around 9. Gabby was excited at first but then we hit up the red tape that governs crossing the Savannah Stage. It seems that it had not yet been cleared from the previous night. So, here we are, second band in line to cross and we are stopped in one area. For. Ever. Okay, not forever, but close to an hour, which was ridiculous considering the ages of the children involved and the heat of the morning. Gabby had a couple of meltdowns and when we got to the stage, she, um, staged a mutiny:

Sat down. On the stage. In front of the judging station. In hindsight I can just laugh. It wasn't so amusing on 1 hour of sleep though. Eventually we bribed her to get up and the conversation in the car revolved around her suggestion that she didn't want to do this next year but maybe we should wait until she's a little older.

Good call, Oh Wise Pumpkin.

Gavin spent his time in other pursuits. He remained barebacked, ate a lot, and talked on the phone to anyone who called.

He also learned a new skill: cat herding. I think he'll make a fabulous nonprofit employee one day. Auntie Judy's cats, however, did not think much of his new talents, and avoided him like the plague when they saw him coming. "Snoopy! Mia! Caesar! Where are you?!" was a new phrase he added to his vocabulary while he was in Trinidad. Not to be outdone, Gabby also made friends with the  neighbors' kids. She also learned to climb walls, a time-honored family skill.

We did find the time to visit the beach too. Bake and shark is a must, and it was nice to hang out with Derrick and Rae-Ann. Gavin loved the beach. Loved. Too bad the surf was a little rough so we didn't get in the water too much.

We left on an early Sunday flight and came back to the same miserably cold weather as the day we left. Until next year, Trinis!

There are lots of photos to go with this post, but blogger was being a pain in the ass. So here it is, six months later... sans photos. Use your imagination! 

Flashback

In about a week, we'll be winging our way down to Trinidad for the good old family vacation with family. Carnival, plus the Spaz' and my fifteenth wedding anniversary. This year the kids' birthdays won't fall while we are down there, so we will actually - gasp! - have a stateside birthday party!

Three years ago, Gabby turned two. We were in the grips of Snowmageddon and whatnot, and for some reason we had decided not to go to Trinidad in February and instead went in June. That time the whole gang took a trip to Tobago for a week. Picture it - twentysomething Gordons packed into a three-story, three apartment house. It was amazing that everyone got along. Unbeknownst to us, Gavin was present, but probably about the size of the head of a pin at the time.

We came back to our Malick digs for a few days. One afternoon, people were hanging about. Gabby, now about 2 1/2, and Rohan were inside the house while the adults were liming on the front porch. Rohan suddenly appeared on the porch looking quiet and, in retrospect, a little suspicious. I asked him where Gabby was and he pointed to the laundry room area. This was an open-air room that ran part of the length of Auntie Pam's house, cut off by gates on either end, and tiled with red clay. I walked out to see Gabby at the far end with a magic marker in hand doing her finest imitation of Picasso. I could only gasp and laugh. So, I went back out to the porch with the little criminal to let Auntie Pam know of her knew decorating scheme out back. Bill was HORRIFIED. HIS child did this? And with magic marker?

Auntie Pam, the oldest of ten, mother of two including Neighborhood Legend Randy, and grandmother of three - including the aforementioned Ro - just shrugged it off and laughed. I took a closer look at Rohan who was suspiciously quiet. We started asking him how Gabby got the marker in the first place. Remember - this is his turf, not Gabby's. He is avoiding the question. I went back and took a closer look at the art and saw some suspiciously straight lines out there. Turns out that Rohan got the marker, started the art project... then handed the marker to Gabby and walked away. Little devils! I should take some pictures when we are there next week. I'm sure the art is still there, three years on.